Whether your a Realtor, property owner, buyer, developer, or even a hunter...there were probably times you would like to have a handheld GPS with the property lines of the land you are walking on displayed. This would allow you to know exactly where the property lines were, and more importantly where YOU were in relation to the property boundaries.
This short video demo will show you one solution I have come up with using Open Source (free) software.
Whether your a Realtor, property owner, buyer, developer, or even a hunter...there were probably times you would like to have a handheld GPS with the property lines of the land you are walking on displayed. This would allow you to know exactly where the property lines were, and more importantly where YOU were in relation to the property boundaries.
This short video demo will show you one solution I have come up with using Open Source (free) software.
Whether your a Realtor, a land owner, a land buyer, a developer, a hunter...at some point you have probably said to yourself "it would really be nice if I could download property boundary lines directly to a handheld GPS. For a Realtor, this means you can now walk property with a potential buyer with the confidence you know where property lines are and where you are on the property. For a developer walking large tracts of land, the same is true. For a hunter, well if you have permission to hunt on someone's land you might want to make sure your actually on that property.
The video below will show you a short video of a solution I put together using Open Source applications to accomplish just that, downloading GIS property lines to a Garmin GPS.
· Want To Own a Community? Try Sponsoring a Neighborhood Website
by Barrett Powell
Community websites were once the domain of the developer and the homeowner’s association. However, with the expanding presence of the web in real-estate, 
community websites have taken on more of an “active referral” role for the savvy firm and agent. Using a community web can allow an agent and a firm to become part of the community by offering services and information the property owners see as useful. This type of website offers the most upside of any online strategy taken on by the agent and firm, especially if the agent and firm has already sold homes to clients in that neighborhood. The old saying “it cost a lot less to sell to an existing customer than it does to get a new one” still holds true today. The focus of an existing client after all is not just selling them another property or listing their home, it is getting them to tell others about you and recommend you to them. In other words, to become an “active referral” for you and your firm.
Community websites can be categorized as one of four basic types; Homeowner’s Association type sites, marketing sites, discussion boards, and the newest hybrid that includes aspects of each called “Community Web”. Each has characteristics that exist based on the specific job the site was designed to do. Let’s take a look at each.
Homeowner Sites
Homeowner Association sites such as those offered commercially by companies like AtHome.net and CAMS are directed at the property owners and are what we call serial in nature. These sites are Web 1.0 in terms of features and functionality and most go unused if used at all. These sites usually go up after a certain percentage of the development has been sold. This is more than enough time for another firm or agent to come in and establish themselves as the “resale” agent of choice. We have seen this time and time again once a new home development is sold out.
But these Homeowner Sites again are not meant to drive business to a firm or agent. They are there to perform a service of providing an online information brochure and offer access to community documents, and a rudimentary communications platform that relies mostly on e-mail blast as a method of communication. The content is static for the most part, and we find most of the time information is out of date or not posted at all. These sites are usually controlled by the association and the elected officials of that board and do not act as referral or business basis for an agent or firm. They were not created to benefit a firm or agent.
Marketing Sites
For the most part, marketing sites are online brochures. They are typically designed by a local web firm. The lifecycle of the traditional marketing site consist of a startup at the opening of the development and then remaining up and unchanged for the duration of the neighborhood’s new home sales. We are not going to spend time on this type of community site because I think everyone is already pretty familiar with 
them and their purpose. Let me just say that there is an excellent opportunity to own the referral base of the development by simply transforming the marketing site over time.
In other words, by adding more of the features we will discuss in the next two community sites the marketing site can transform into the community web. And since time and effort have been used to brand the site and market it to begin with, it would be a natural progression for homeowners to begin to leverage the same site they used to purchase their home to securely find a babysitter in their new neighborhood.
Discussion Boards
A fairly new phenomenon is neighborhood discussion boards. These boards can range from open boards which resembles more of a wild west interaction to more helpful neighbor to neighbor type that are closely monitored and keep conversations positive. The key to these type of sites is that for the first time, members can participate in a more parallel format where they control when they communicate and are communicated with verses an e-mail blast. Information can be posted and read and responded to in a more natural language progression of back and forth. These sites create more of an actual sense of neighborhood, even on a small level for an individual development. The key is to restrict access to property owners only and to monitor the site for inappropriate content.
Blogs are in essence a form of a message board. The poster presents his or her information and solicits comments concerning its content. A blog can offer a 
property owner an option to e-mail blast for information that may be long in content or that may need to be referred to multiple times. Utilizing a tool like Twitter to accomplish mini-blogging, 
members may choose to “follow” content such as neighborhood updates or can simply go to the community web where the neighborhood Twits are posted in a community news and updates section. Either way, these create more of a dynamic Web 2.0 environment and much more likely to be visited, thus more likely to offer the sponsoring firm or agent better access and more “impressions” to be view.
The Hybrid or “Community Web” Site
Now let’s take the best of the all the other sites and add things like widgets from such sites as Trulia and Zillow real-estate. Property owners can get instant updates on home values and other property related information on their neighborhood and access to real-estate reports. Coupled with continued property listings from the 
Marketing Site, the homeowners will feel more empowered concerning when and if they should sell and they will be more thankful to the agent or firm providing them with this key information.
You can also add RSS feeds from other complimentary sites such as county or town government. If you don’t have a feed available from your local government of local news site, create your own feed using sites like Feed43 (www.feed43.com). By creating a space where property owners can go to get information in one place they cannot get elsewhere about their particular neighborhood, you create more of a sense of community and a sense of loyalty, and thus the site becomes an “active referral site” for you and your firm.
You don’t need to spend a bundle to start your own community web. There are two ways to do this for little or no money. One is to host a site that you build using all these free tools. The other is to leverage free sites that are “ad” funded. Let’s look at both of these options.
Hosting Your Own Site
If you’re savvy enough to have your own web server, or if your firm has its own or a hosted web server you are able to use, you can create your own community website 
by using tools available to you at no cost.
The first thing to do is go out and shoot some photos of your community. There may be “canned” photos available and as long as you have permission to use them that is fine. You want to gather as much information about your community to add to your main page so that visitors can read a little about the community or development. Leave space to add news feeds, widgets, or other items that might make the main page more interesting.
You want to use have a secure discussion board for your site so property owners can ask questions and provide answers in a neighbor to neighbor sort of environment. You don’t have to make this secure if you don’t want. You can open the discussion board up to the public as well. Just make sure you use the administrative feature of your board to approve any postings before they are posted. Either way, you want to make sure improper content doesn’t end up on your site and that neighbors feel comfortable posting for things like babysitters or someone to do yard work.
With regard to discussion boards, there are a number of options here. Most of your hosting companies offer some type of message board feature for free with your hosting contract. For instance, the hosting company Hostway offers free InterActives Forums with every hosting account. This gives you much more flexibility and provides for a no additional cost “ad free” BBS.
Another option is what are called “ad supported” message boards. An example of one of these is ProBoards (www.proboards.com). You can setup as many message boards as you want, and the advertising is actually very unobtrusive. Most of the time you don’t even notice the ads and what ads you do see are many times applicable to message board visitors. Each one of these boards does have a “for fee” version that removes any ads, and the cost is very small.
If you have your own web server or you have a hosted account that for some reason does not include a message board feature, you can also use public domain message board code that is free and readily available for download from sites like Sourceforge. Examples of these are PHPBB which is one of the most popular to Mombaboard which works in conjunction with Momba, another public domain web site application. There are literally hundreds of such applications that are literally drop in your website or hosting site and begin administering the board.
Regardless of which ever message board tool or technology you choose, they are each designed to be easily inserted or embedded into your community web site in a seamless way.
Adding blogging and mini-blogging to your community site is just as easy. Again, most hosting companies offer blogging as a free or low cost add-on to your account. If they don’t, there are many options here as well.
Two of the most popular free blog sites are Blogger and Wordpress. Both offer free sign up and design and you can start your own custom blog in just a matter of minutes. The result will be your own web URL for your own web blog site. You can now insert or embed either of these via your URL into your community web site. While it is not required, by registering your own blog domain name, you can use a custom url, such as ChathamDownsBlogByBarrett.com to navigate to your blog page separately. Your blog is a great way to announce events or news updates for your community. You can even provide community leaders, such as the president of the HOA with their own user login to allow them to post to the blog as well. And the results get posted to your blog site and to the embedded spot on the community web site.
If you have little tidbits of information that need to be shared with the community why not think about setting up a community Twitter account. You can post up to 240 characters of information in little info bites that can be posted quickly and read quickly. You can even post and read Twits on a mobile phone. Homeowners can “follow” the post via e-mail or on Twitter. Twitter also provides code that allows you to insert or embed the Twits, Twitter post, into the community website. These could be inserted on the main page as a Community News section. Links can even be included in the Twits so visitors can click on the link in the Twit and be taken to the linked page to read more information. One example I use is to post short little bits about local government events or news and then include the link to the full article on the town or county website.
Building this type of “hybrid” community web portal is more difficult to do than just paying for a commercial HOA website. But it gives you much more flexibility with regard to branding and content and includes the social networking aspects not available in the commercial sites. If you have the ability, or can find a tech type or web development company to help you put together this type of community web portal the payoff will come in the form of more listings and sales as you become the “embedded” realtor of the community.
Finally, if you just don’t have the ability or time to do any of the above, there is one more option. Sites like Ning have just come out that allow you to sign up for free and create your own social networking community site. The sites don’t do everything, but hey, it’s free and its quick, what do you expect. That said, the sites that can be created are still very interesting and done right and kept up to date can still become an “active referral” site for the agent and firm.
Now get out and start building your own community!
Barrett Powell
· 
A lot of people are Twittering. But how many are using the Twitter Apps to add feeds to your website? If you’re not, you’re missing out on an excellent opportunity. You can even have multiple Twitter accounts for different personalities. Let me explain.
Let’s say you’re looking for a quick way to add personalized updates to your website. Did you know you can add a Twitter update feed right into your site using the Twitter Apps? Look at your current website and figure where would be a good place to have a small Twitter feed added to the page, or another separate page in your site. The feed will be a small square whose length is dependent on the number of feed items you choose to have shown at one time without scrolling. Keep this space in mind. Now let’s go to Twitter and get our feed.
Located at the bottom of the page in Twitter, is a menu item called Apps. Clicking on this will take you to a page with many little programs called widgets that you can add to various websites. By selecting the very first widget, the one offered by Twitter, you can then select the HTML option on the next page and pick next. Then you can select how many Twitt feeds you want displayed at one time and what if any title you want. Don’t worry that you have more than the number of Twitts shown in your account. It just means the rest will be available with a scroll bar that is automatically added to the feed widget. The result will be code that Twitter offers you to copy into your clipboard. Once you have copied the code, you are ready to past it into your site.
If you do your own websites like I do, you simply figure out where you want the widget to be placed on your site. If you use one of those canned websites, you can probably use the code on them to. My company website is provided by e-Neighborhoods through my affiliation with RE/MAX. The default site had a nice little text box that was just sitting there not really helping my site or my site ranking. I simply replaced that static text box with my Twitter widget. You can see the results here http://barrett.powell.remax.com, and follow my postings on this site on Twitter under the name “barrettp”.
If you setup your Twitter account with your mobile phone, under the Devices tab on your Twitter settings, you can even send Twitter updates via your mobile phone. Because the feed is real-time, any updates sent via your phone show up immediately on your website now. Once I was sitting in a restaurant waiting on my order and remembered some bit of news I wanted on my website. I pulled out my Treo 700wx phone and posted the news on my Twitter account and it showed up right then on my website. How cool is that?
I like to post little short news headlines and then past the link to the full story in the post. As you know, Twitter will convert really long URLs into what it calls “tiny urls” so your post will fit the 240 character limit. So it’s a great place to post news about a new post in your larger Blog with the link to the full blog posting.
Now, let’s say like me, you’re looking for more of an advantage in your market. And 
let’s say like me, you have a fairly large market for “Green” type construction and homes. You could do like me and create another Twitter account that focuses just on topics of “Green” real-estate. In my case, my “Green” Twitter account is “GreenHomesandLand”. Not only are my topics focused on “Green”, but my Twitter theme reflects this “Green” branding as well. I even setup a separate website, http://www.GreenHomesandLand.net, which features links, resources, and even listings for my area that are Energy Star compliant and focus on “Green” living.
So get out there and start “Branding” yourself with customized Twitter feeds about your area and area of expertise. And don’t be afraid to have multiple Twitter personalities to cover the vertical real-estate markets, such as Green, or New Homes, or Retired Living, or whatever area you specialize in.
· Living and working as a Realtor in rural North Carolina, one of our rites of passage has always been walking land with buyers and sellers. While this all sounds easy enough, notwithstanding the needed exercise, it can really turn into AN EXCERSISE if the property lines are not clearly marked, which is the case most of the time. If you are a rural agent or property owner, you know exactly what I mean. Sometimes you may be able to locate a corner marker or two and then try and draw an imaginary line between them. Knowing about where the property line is can be extremely helpful for obvious reasons. But other less obvious reasons to know where property lines are become even more evident when you get right down to it.
One good example for knowing where property lines are would be to locate items on the land and know whether the item was on your property or your neighbor’s. Things like trees, easements, and roads are the obvious. Things like setbacks, stream buffers, and such are less so. In rural areas, we typically have no county water or sewer so we have to have wells and septic systems located on the property. Many times you have to provide your local government with the location of the house and well to have a septic field located on the property. This is to assure a minimum distance between the house and well from the septic field. So there are many reasons for having a good way of knowing where property lines and other features of the property are located.
There are also good reasons to know where YOU in relation to boundaries and other features on a piece of property too. I have walked many a parcel that was heavily wooded. If you are walking a heavily wooded tract that is 10 acres or more it is not difficult to get turned around and not know which was is back to the truck. Don’t ask me how I now this. You especially don’t want to try this at the height of the tic season. It is especially good to walk the property with the current property owner and not simply rely on their recollection of where the property runs. You would not believe how many incorrect boundaries are handed down generation to generation. A buyer will appreciate knowing where they are on the property to help them visualize where they might want to build their house, or locate a barn or other facility.
Over the years, I have found solutions using free public domain software to get property data into my handheld GPS. Today, all my agents use the system to walk property with sellers and buyers. It has become a competitive advantage. My agents get asked all the time about how to get the same capability. So I have put together a link with the software you download and install along in instructions on how to use it. Contact me and for a nominal fee I'll send you the link to an application you can download and install along with instructions on how to find the parcel or parcels you need and upload them into your GPS.
There is no longer a reason to walk land without confidence.
Barrett Powell
· When I bought my first RE/MAX franchise, I was surprised at the lack of technology available for the modern real-estate office. And what was available seemed to be outdated and expensive.
For example, I went looking for something better than Microsoft Outlook to use as a real-estate CRM system. What I found were tools that hadn't changed much since they were introduced years earlier and whose sales models were not very agent and firm friendly.
I knew I needed something that was based on industry standards; just in case the vendor went out of business I'd still have access to my prospect and client database. I knew it had to be web based so agents could have access from laterally anywhere. It needed to be server based so the client data did not get lost when an agents laptop crashed and to provide easier and more secure backups. It needed to be flexible so new processes and features could be added easily and quickly. Social Networking is a good example of a technology that needed to be added to whatever CRM system I chose.
In the end, no commercial system worked. It was then I turned to the world of public domain software. Public domain software is free software that companies make available to the open community. Most of these companies also sell commercial versions of these programs, but if you’re fairly tech savvy or have some basic computer support at your office there is no reason not to take advantage of free software.
So what did I choose? I selected the community edition of SugarCRM. SugarCRM has been around for many years and has a large corporate and government sector following as clients and users. I ended up making some minor modifications to make it more real-estate friendly. I added a Social Networking component that allows agents to access all their real-estate social networks on one tab as well as post to them and write their blogs. It also has a connection to the online document management system I created using another public domain program called KnowledgeTree. We keep all our documents and contracts in this system instead of having to keep paper copies in file cabinet somewhere.
Below is a list of "free" applications that can be used for some very good real-estate problem solving:
SugarCRM - web based Customer Relationship Management system for keeping contact information, launching campaigns, providing a sign-up and sign-in feature for your real-estate websites, and many more needed capabilities. www.sugarcrm.com.
KnowledgeTree DMS - web based Document Management System for storing documents and contracts. Uses a familiar folder style interface to let agents store documents. Provides an automated OCR feature that indexes stored documents as well as what is called metadata which aids in searching and retrieving documents and contracts later. www.knowledgetree.com.
ProcessMaker - is a very interesting type of application commonly referred to as Workflow. With ProcessMaker you could for instance design a New Client process that would automatically step an agent, a new sales agent for instance, through the New Client process while providing all the company and state regulated document and process requirements, including contracts at the appropriate times in the process. The system would then notify the Manager to check the contracts or documents for completeness and correctness before they moved on to the next step in the process. This little application is also web based and could really aid in quality level of service and in sales agent oversight. www.processmaker.com.
MapWindow GIS - use this free application to download GIS data in ESRI Shapefile format from your local government. Now you can find and select parcels of land you have listed and save them to a separate Shapefile to upload to a handheld GPS. www.mapwindow.com.
DNRGarmin - use this free application from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to upload your saved Shapefile from MapWindow to your handheld Garmin GPS system so you can now walk land. Link To DNRGarmin.
These are just a few of the many free public domain applications available with real-estate uses. Contact me for a demo login to see any of these applications in action and the real-estate templates I have created for them. You can also visit the website where I feature these and other applications as well as the blog and twitter post. www.RealEstateWebExpert.com.
Thanks,
Barrett
Basically all I did was go out and walk a big circle around the house shooting a photo every few feet. But instead of just shooting in a perfect line, I just threw the photos together, sometimes walking up and taking a closer photo of the rock work or the wrap around porches. The system figured out how to place the photo in my "synth" so that it flowed in with the other photos. The resulting 3-D effect once you have gone completely around the house in the tour is really stunning.
To understand how to take photos for Photosynth, go here:
http://photosynth.net/howtosynth.aspx
Like I said, I am truly amazed at how this technology works. And Microsoft is making it free. In fact you get 20GB of space to use for your "synths". The technology works equally well shooting inside of the property. You just stand in a corner and shoot while sweeping the camera from one of the opposite corners to the next. Then you can stand in the middle of the wall and do the same for additional perspectives.
So give it try. You have nothing to lose except more exposure for your listings.
Barrett Powell
Another real challenge we as agents and firm owners run into is managing the ever increasing load of paperwork we have to keep and maintain for many years. Most of us have physical File Rooms with rows of filing cabinets full of client contracts and documents. The cost of maintaining these physical rooms is actually staggering, especially given the market today. Two years ago I went looking for a document management solution that would meet the requirements for real-estate while remaining simple to use and more importantly cost effective. Once again I turned to the Open Source (free) community and found an application called KnowledgeTree. It proved to be simple to setup for real-estate and yet very powerful. The link below will take you to a short video demo on YouTube:
Have you and/or your agents go to http://download.live.com/messenger to download Windows Live Messenger. Then go to Windows LIve at http://login.live.com and get an ID you plan to share with anyone that takes floor duty. Only one person should be logged in at a time with that ID, the agent on duty, though you can have more than one actually signed. Now once you sign in on the web to your ID, you will see on the left the ability to create Web HTML that will allow you embed a Windows Live Messenger window on a webpage. You copy that code. Then log in to your website setup and add a page. You can call the page whatever you want but I find something like "Instant Chat" a good idea. Then in the blank paragraph area of that page select any "HTML" check box so the input converts from plain text to html input and you "paste" the code you copied earlier into that section. Now go to your "Menu" tool and add a menu item that links to the page you just created. You can add the menu item wherever in your menu you see fit. I placed mine in the "Contact Us" menu area. Now have your agent on duty login to the ID you created earlier, the ID you share with your agents to use when they are on floor duty, and now when anyone clicks on your "Instant Chat" menu item they will see a Windows Live Messenger windows on your website with the ID you chose listed at the top and an indicator of "Online" or "Offline" depending on whether or not the agent on duty is signed in. If signed in, the web visitor can now initiate a chat session with the agent on duty. There is also a mobile version of Windows Live Messenger so agents can even monitor and chat with website visitors from their mobile phones. How cool is that! We have been using this since it went into beta about 2 years ago and we actually get a few chat request per week off our website to inquire about properties. Enjoy!
Barrett Powell
· 
In these tough times, it sometimes seems the only ones making money in Real-Estate are the ones selling products to Realtors. After looking for many months for a cost effective alternative to Microsoft Outlook for handling my firms customers and leads, I stumbled upon an Open Source (free version) of SugarCRM. The application runs on Windows or Linux as either a standalone, networked server, or as a web server over the internet. Follow the link below to view a short demo on YouTube.
Isn’t technology great? With just the click of my mouse, I have posted this message to all my blogs and social networks at once. We are talking about my Wordpress blog, Twitter, My Typepad Blog, Facebook, literally dozens of sites that I use to blog and contribute and socialize on for technology. I no longer have to log in to each one of these accounts and write. Heck, I’m even able to post videos to all my video sites, photos to my photo sites, and it all happens via e-mail.
To do this, I can use a couple of methods. One that requires a little more setup is to use the “Post via E-Mail” feature most blog and social sites offer today. Once you sign-up for the service, say Xanga.com for instance, you have the option of posting via e-mail using a special e-mail address that is provided you by the site. I simply take all these e-mail addresses and post them into the “To” on my e-mail or create a distribution list with all those address. I can then send my e-mail and it updates to all my sites.
Another way is to use a aggregate service like the one I use called Posterous. It can be located at Posterous.com. Once you sign-up for the service, which is free by the way, you simply follow the instructions for setting up your blog and sites. Again, it can take a little time to setup, but once your done you can then post to all the sites you setup in the system by sending an e-mail to posterous.com. There are some minor limitations and not all sites work. For instance, I have two Wordpress blogs, one that is hosted on my hosting company’s server and one that is free and hosted by Wordpress.com. The hosted blog that is hosted on my own site works fine, as it allows for XML remote posting which is used by Posterous. My other Wordpress account is one of the free accounts hosted on Wordpress.com. It does not offer XML remote posting. To post to that account I use the “Post via E-Mail” option under the My Blog section. So to post to all of them, I simply e-mail to my Posterous account and e-mail my Wordpress.com e-mail account.
If you have any questions on how to setup, drop me an e-mail.
Barrett Powell
